LG may be looking to switch on Google TV

Media report offers some possible good news for Google TV, which just lost Logitech as a partner and has been criticized by some reviewers for pushing out a major update they say wasn't worth the wait.

Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Seoul, South Korea-based LG plans to unveil a television based on Google software at CES in January. LG is the world's second-largest manufacturer of TV sets.

Representatives for both LG and Google have declined to comment. But the report, if true, could signal welcome good news for Google TV. In the past two weeks, the Google product has not only been dismissed by Logitech, but also dogged by reviewers, including CNET's Matthew Moskovciak, who said a recently released major update aimed at simplifying the user interface is frustratingly unready for prime time.

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Google TV, which lets users view Web sites and Internet video on their home TVs, launched last year with Sony, Dish Network, and Logitech. The product, of course, has one less partner as of this week as Logitech said it will let existing inventory of its Revue with Google TV set-top box run out this quarter and won't make another set-top box in its place.

At an Analyst and Investor Day hosted by Logitech on Wednesday, CEO Guerrino De Luca told investors that Logitech lost more than $100 million in operating profits due both to "miscues" related to the EMEA region and the Revue. He went so far as to call production of the Revue a "mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature."

Logitech's move didn't come as a giant surprise. The company earlier this year revealed seriously disappointing sales numbers for the product and accompanying gear.

Clarification, November 15 at 10:34 a.m. PT: The story was amended to indicate that the $100 million loss resulted not only from the Revue, but from miscalculations in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region.

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Leslie Katz, Crave's senior editor, heads up a team that covers the most crushworthy (and wackiest) tech, science, and culture around. As a co-host of the now-retired CNET News Daily Podcast, she was sometimes known to channel Terry Gross and still uses her trained "podcast voice" to bully the speech recognition software on automated customer service lines. E-mail Leslie.
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